The festival was also accompanied by more than a dozen other projects promoting Polish music. The CoMA concert featured first performances of new works commissioned by the festival organisers: by Pawel Lukaszewski, Hanna Kulenty and Zbigniew Rudzinski (on 2nd May) as well as workshops on music and notation by, among others, Boguslaw Schaeffer. Numerous compositions by Polish composers had their British premieres: Entrata by Krzysztof Penderecki, Brass No. 1 by Hanna Kulenty (24th April), Oratio by Maciej Zielinski and Cantata op. 26 by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (25th April), ...though Daedalus flew safe... by Pawel Mykietyn (26th April), Space Model by Marta Ptaszynska, Maximum Load by Agata Zubel, Collage Tango by Tadeusz Wielecki and Refrain by Zygmunt Krauze (27th April), Commencement by Zygmunt Krauze and Touracou by Marta Ptaszynska (29th April), Un Grand Sommeil Noir and Variations for solo flute by Marta Ptaszynska and Through the Looking Glass III by Pawel Szymanski, String Quartet No. 3 by Krzysztof Penderecki (30th April), Three Preludes for Clarinet by Marcel Chyrzynski, Unilaterality by Dawid Jarzynski and Sextet by Krzysztof Penderecki (1st May), Still Life with Violin by Hanna Kulenty (2nd May).
On 30th April – 2nd May 2009, an international conference: Polish Music since 1945 was held in Canterbury Christ Church University with the participation of such eminent musicologists and researchers studying Polish music as Adrian Thomas and Charles Bodman Rae. The invited conference participants from all over the world delivered papers on such topics as The Aesthetics of the Polish School, Performance and Interpretation, Inspiration and Self-Presentation, Polish Film Music, Polish Jazz. On 30th April at 3.45 pm there was a meeting with Krzysztof Penderecki chaired by Profs. Paul Patterson and John Casken. Details are available at the conference website: http://www.cccupolishmusicconference.org.uk/
One of the Festival cycles was Polish Film Weekends, presenting films with music by Wojciech Kilar (23rd April: The Silent Touch, dir. Krzysztof Zanussi; 24th April: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, dir. Francis Ford Coppola) and Krzysztof Penderecki (2nd May: Katyn, dir. Andrzej Wajda). The Festival also includes presentations of documentaries: Warsaw Autumn (prod. BBC 1978 – 28th April) and A Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1993, dir. Tony Palmer – 29th April), as well as numerous exhibitions, installations, workshops, meetings, and concerts for children.
See the full Festival programme: pdf file
